Oscar Werner Tiegs, 1897-1956

Abstract

Oscar Werner Tiegs died on 5 November 1956 at the age of 59. He was at the height of his intellectual power, and in him we have lost a great biologist of this generation. His scientific work is not easily summarized, for his interests extended from physiological analysis of nervous and muscular action to studies in classical invertebrate embryology comparable to the very best work of the last century. He repeatedly turned and returned from one field of work to another. But all his work bore the highly individual stamp of the man. It had clarity, insight and thoroughness, which made his memoirs, long though they are, eminently readable. And this quality was combined with a remarkable power of apt and beautiful illustration. It is scarcely ever safe to predict what part of a man’s work will be the most enduring. But in the case of Oscar Tiegs it will surely be the major part he has played in leading us to divide the great phylum of the Arthropoda into two distinct parts; the one comprising the insects, myriapods, and that curious relicPeripatus, the other comprising the Trilobites, the Crustacea and the arachnids. His work did not simply make one more phylogenetic division in our animal classification. His long detailed researches have established the strongest body of circumstantial evidence for the close relationship of the members of the Myriapod-Insect group, and have thereby greatly increased our understanding of these animals.